An Ol' Fashioned Iowa Farm Halloween

Some interesting points on Halloween from Galen Dalrymple. What was Halloween like in yesteryear's farm country of northwestern Iowa? His answer may surprise you.

As my mind recalls, at Halloween every year, the sky was dominated by a bright orange harvest moon that held me spellbound as I gazed over the freshly harvested fields of corn. The corn stalks stood like ghostly shadows as the moon beams touched the face of the earth. Leaves skittered across the gravel in the barn yard as the breeze stirred, casting a chill wherever it journeyed.

We lived too far away from neighboring farms to walk to trick or treat, so our parents had to drive us from one farm house to the next. Unlike today when kids will visit upwards of 100 houses in a night, we were grateful to visit say, 10 neighboring farms. We knew the people well. It was the kind of community where everyone helped one another in time of misfortune or harvest. We didn’t need to fear razor blades or poison in the candy. The love of family and friends surrounded us every moment of those early, innocent years.

You can read the rest here.

Cessationist Review of John MacArthur's "Strange Fire"

I found a notable reaction to John MacArthur's Strange Fire book/conference in the form of a book review, written by Thomas Schreiner, self-dubbed fellow cessationist, professor at Southern Seminary (Louisville) and the author of a book on Pauline studies currently sitting on my office shelf.

"Despite my fundamental exegetical and theological agreement with MacArthur, however, Strange Fire suffers from a focus on the extreme adherents of the charismatic movement. (I did wonder, incidentally, whether Joel Osteen should be labeled a charismatic, for one can be a prosperity preacher without being charismatic.) MacArthur says early in the book he doesn’t distinguish between the three waves of the charismatic movement, but this failure to make distinctions is problematic. He claims the extremes and abuses characterize the movement. But who really knows what the numbers are? Certainly, there are extremes in the movement, and obviously many who have gone astray. But many charismatics reject the likes of Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland.

"Despite qualifications here and there, one could get the impression MacArthur thinks almost all charismatics dishonor the Holy Spirit and are opposed to God. Certainly that is true of false teachers like Benny Hinn, but there are also many charismatics who repudiate the teaching and practices of people like Hinn, and hence the rhetoric of the book should be modified. MacArthur seems to acknowledge as much in his open letter to continuationists who have sound theology, though he believes they are a very small minority. Nevertheless, the clarion call of warning should be modified with clearer and more forthright admissions that many charismatics adhere to the gospel and are faithful to God’s Word."

You can read the rest here. 

Friday Fun: Packer Fan Dedication . . . or Insanity

So, a 6th grade Packer fan hailing from a small town of southwestern Wisconsin has been his Aaron Rodgers jersey constantly. For three years. You can read about it here and here.

Hope he hasn't forgotten how to take a shirt off.

9 Things to Know About Down Syndrome

From Joe Carter, who writes for The Gospel Coalition and Patheos.

As an older brother of someone with Down Syndrome, this hits close to home.

A New Form of Worship War

From Stephen Miller, author of Worship Leaders, We Are Not Rock Stars. (I should have posted this two months ago).

Ours is a generation marked by war.

I’m not referring to a war with guns and tanks, though we have certainly seen our share of that as well. We are a generation that grew up witnessing the church fight over the very thing that was supposed to unite us: the worship of Jesus.

The Good Old Hymns vs. Modern Worship Choruses.

Organ & Piano vs. Those Demon Drums.

Few of us emerged from these consumerism driven worship wars of our younger years unscathed. Their impact has been profound, both personally and corporately.

Fast forward a decade or two and, at first glance, the worship wars that once plagued the church seem to have died down. So it might be easy to chalk it all up to a problem from a bygone era.

Until we walk out of a church service that didn’t meet our own standards.

We have become professional critics of corporate worship. We complain about everything.

The volume is either too loud, or not loud enough. The lighting is either too bright or not bright enough; too showy or too bland.

We grumble about song selection, saying things like, “They introduce too many new songs,” “Why do we keep doing the same songs over and over,” or “I hate that song.”

From key signatures to instrumentation; from the worship leader’s fashion sense to vocal tone – it’s all fair game for our consumer-driven critique.

We are the fast food slogan-slinging generation of “Have it your way.” We are American Idol’s panel of expert judges.

Read the rest here. Thoughts?

What Millenials Wanted to Be When They Grew Up

This Huffington Post article has been making the rounds in cyberspace.

Some very interesting points that strike a chord with many an old millenial (e.g. my peers).

Thoughts?

Friday Fun: Composer Insults

And you thought Shakespearean insults were brutal. In college, I studied music composition and philosophy of the arts, so my colleagues and I were used to such exchanges of constructive criticism in sharpening our music-writing. But not this nasty, especially from Tchaikovsky. Wow. The Nutcracker composer (and one of my faves as a kid) really had an axe to grind.